What was your biggest impulse buy?

TheDrewster

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I was looking back on some pictures and videos I took last year at CAX and I saw the Robotron on the show floor that I ultimately purchased and took home that weekend. It made me chuckle because there was kind of a funny story behind it. I had never purchased a game drunk before.

It was Friday evening at California Extreme and everyone was tidying up the show floor making sure their games were working for the opening day. Myself and Pete (Fedexin) had basically been drinking all evening and we were feeling great. We were wandering around and looking at some of the games and I spy a Robotron 2084 with a For Sale sticker on it. Immediately, I go into panic mode. I wanted Robotron BAD and I packed my truck FULL of games that weekend. I knew if I didn't sell any of the games I hauled down there within the next 48 hours, I wouldn't be able to bring it home. Luckily my good buddy alcohol convinced me that it was no big deal, just man up and buy it and and figure it out later. So I call the dude up and after playing the machine a total of two times, I transfer money into my PayPal on my phone and pony up his asking price of $700 without skipping a beat. Hindsight, it wasn't a bad deal and I had some liquid courage to help me out.

It wasn't all ponies and unicorns though, because during the first day of the show, the joysticks became real flaky and it remained down for the rest of the weekend. Then I still had the issue of having no room to bring it home. And to top it all off, when I was loading the game up at the end of the weekend, I found that there was some decent water damage on the bottom. My fault for not looking, but still a decent deal in the long run. Then finally, I ended up selling the Spy Hunter I brought literally a half hour before the show closed down on Sunday. And I sold it for a screaming deal, so I had just enough room to bring home Robotron after all. All in all, the owner of the Robotron was a great guy to deal with and had I not had several beers beforehand, I wouldn't own a Robotron today. So it all worked out!

So what was your biggest impulse or reckless purchase?
 
Hmm... "biggest" seems to be very appropriate with my impulse buys. I'd say it was either the $25 broken 50" Wave Runner, or the $100 mostly working Super GT twins. I like both of those games, but I had no intention of bringing home either of them from an auction... but when the auctioneer is counting backwards "Do I have $1000... $500, $200, $100... do I have $10?", something in my brain malfunctions. ;)

I actually got a lot of enjoyment out of the Super GTs... I sorta regretted the Wave Runner, since it ended up just hogging garage space for an entire winter (though I sold it for a decent price I guess).

DogP
 
Lol....I know it's not technically a "buy" but it makes it all the better. I picked up a free afterburner upright that needed ALOT. Figured for free, it would be a fun quick project......6 months of work and problems later I got it working....and it's still in my damn garage taking up space lol. I hate the damn game with a passion. I just wanted something to work on.
 
I bought a Indiana jones pin site unseen on the phone while driving up to an operator. Then I sold it on the phone on the drive home. It was back in the 90's, I did not really want the ij, but it was too good of a deal to pass up. I played about 20 games on it and I was getting nowhere on it. So I sold it.
 
Drove to some freaken operator place.
Was there to fix a dam arcade machine for some charity.
I Ended up buy the operators entire warehouse.
Home depot does truck rentals. :)
Left the operator with one working arcade machine and cleared warehouse.

Operator did call me back and and wanted some thing back so I drive back and dropped it off.
 
Drove to some freaken operator place.
Was there to fix a dam arcade machine for some charity.
I Ended up buy the operators entire warehouse.
Home depot does truck rentals. :)
Left the operator with one working arcade machine and cleared warehouse.

Operator did call me back and and wanted some thing back so I drive back and dropped it off.

Been there too. Went to visit an operator in Stockton and bought his warehouse. They were all the games from his arcade that I think was called supercade. I got the warehouse too for a month. Used it to get the games ready and sell them.

I guess a bigger inpulse buy was when I went on a newspaper ad to buy a dig dug upright. Guy opened a storage locker and it was filled with 30 classics. Made a deal and bought them all they were all the games from a gilroy arcade after he closed it.
 
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A DDR for $300 was one of my biggest impulse buys. I bought it for work thinking it would be a fun game until HR said it was a liability in case someone got hurt so I ended up selling it lol
 
I did an impulse bid on an eBay auction that was ending about 8 miles from me for 350.00. It was for two cabs, Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. in a storage unit - I won the auction. My wife got pissed that I didn't consult her first...she had other plans for the money.

But I saw the price and location and blacked out after that....when I awoke there was two cabs in my garage....:D
 
Been there too. Went to visit an operator in Stockton and bought his warehouse. They were all the games from his arcade that I think was called supercade. I got the warehouse too for a month. Used it to get the games ready and sell them.

I guess a bigger inpulse buy was when I went on a newspaper ad to buy a dig dug upright. Guy opened a storage locker and it was filled with 30 classics. Made a deal and bought them all they were all the games from a gilroy arcade after he closed it.

I tend to find operators and collectors who are leaving this hobby/ business ..

It one of the reasons why my collection tends to grow by leaps and bounds.
 
Bought a Black Widow from a KLOV member in California and had it shipped as a present to myself for graduating college at 37.

I had never seen a Black Widow before let alone played one. One of my favorites now.
 
Bought a Black Widow from a KLOV member in California and had it shipped as a present to myself for graduating college at 37.

I had never seen a Black Widow before let alone played one. One of my favorites now.

Did you hang the degree as side art??
;)
 
My biggest impulse buy ever was my last one. I was looking online for an Asteroids for my friend at work and found this. Less than 8 hours later it was in my house. Thought my wife would be pissed but she absolutely loves it.

Juke1.jpg
 
Darius Burst

My "biggest" impulse buy was a Darius Burst. Desperately wanted one..... but I had never played the game, just loved others in the series.


Now if I can only find an R360 somewhere..... =-)

Brian
 
Probably GnR. I played it for the first time at Pinagogo, and started looking for one as soon as I got home. It took a couple of months to get here, and I bought an AC/DC at around the same time the GnR showed up. That was a fun month.
 
A Repro DPTwiz Ms Pac cab, painted by John Popson. Nearly a grand after it was all said and done. WAY too much money for my tight-ass wallet. I still can't believe I bought it.

2012-05-27_13-47-22_93.jpg
 
My biggest impulse buy was definitely the first arcade game I ever bought. It was (and still is) a DK that is barley holding onto life by a thread.

They say "you always pay the most for you first one" and I was not exception. In fact, I'm so embarrassed by how much I paid that I can't even admit it here.

This DK had all kinds of issues:

- Missing back door
- Monitor had a waving flag issue
- PCB had background siren sound
- Missing side art
- Particle board sides
- huge chunk of the wood missing near the top (see picture below)

006.jpg
 
A brand new Metallica pinball machine. I would have considered anyone pissing away almost 6 grand on something like that an idiot. It was more than I had into all of the other games I owned combined. Later that same year, I doubled down on the stupid and bought a new Star Trek.

Sincerely,
Idiot
 
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